INXS – What You Need
1985 · Directed by Richard Lowenstein and Lynn-Maree Milburn
59K Likes
Best comments
1.“Whenever anyone asks, 'Beatles or Stones?' my answer is always INXS.”
More comments
- 2.“I know what I need... a time machine.”
- 3.“This song is tough! I pulled up to an intersection, windows down, blasting it. In the lowrider next to me were two guys in shades with tattoos on their necks. They looked mean. The driver turned, looked at me... and started nodding his head to the beat.”
The story
This is the hit INXS made because somebody told them they didn't have one. Producer Chris Thomas felt the album Listen Like Thieves was missing a single, so the band wrote and recorded What You Need in one day. Andrew Farriss, Michael Hutchence and Jon Farriss share the credit. It came out in Australia in August 1985 and climbed to number two there, then crossed the Pacific in 1986 and became their first American top ten, peaking at number five on the Billboard Hot 100.
The band's longtime collaborator Richard Lowenstein made the video with Lynn-Maree Milburn, and they went full arts-and-crafts on it. They shot with an SLR motor-drive camera, then hand-painted the rolls of film and pieced them back together, so the band flickers between live action, rotoscope animation and stop-motion jitter. In 1985 that was still exotic stuff. It won Best Video at the 1985 Countdown Music and Video Awards.
A song knocked out in a day, wrapped in a video that took a paintbrush to every frame. Funky and scratchy and alive.
